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Essay Advice: “To be, or not to be”

For the essay portions of the “To be, or not to be” project, remember to BALANCE your CD‘s with your CM‘s appropriately. If you decide to use a large chunk of text from Hamlet’s soliloquy, my best advice to you is to dissect that large chunk into bite-sized pieces and then write your interpretation of each piece individually.

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Here’s an example of writing an interpretation using a soliloquy from Macbeth:

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—–Macbeth’s soliloquy at the conclusion of Act II, scene 1 essentially boils down to the titular character’s inner conflict with temptation:

Is this a dagger which I see before me,
The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.
I have not, and yet I see thee still.
Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible
To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but
A dagger of the mind, a false creation,
Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? (2.1.33-39)

Here in the beginning of the soliloquy, Macbeth sees a vision of a dagger floating in the air. He attempts to grab it, but fails, and then he questions its very existence. It is obvious here how disgusted Macbeth is with himself by debating with himself whether or not to kill King Duncan in order to seize the throne for himself.

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Notice that when a large chunk of text is used (i.e. longer than 3 lines in a work of drama) as a concrete detail that it is indented and separated from the rest of the paragraph, which should be almost entirely my commentary/interpretation of what the text means. (That is what the assignment is, after all.)

Take a moment and count how many lines I used here from the original text.

Now count how many pieces of commentary that I wrote that come from ME and do not involve summarizing plot.

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Go on, I’ll wait.

….

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….

Answer: 7 lines of concrete detail, and 1 piece of commentary.

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Now take a look at a second example focusing on the SAME soliloquy from Macbeth…only THIS time, the large chunk of concrete detail is broken up into pieces throughout the paragraph.

—–Macbeth’s soliloquy at the conclusion of Act II, scene 1 essentially boils down to the titular character’s inner conflict with temptation. When Macbeth asks no one in particular if “this is a dagger which I see before me, the handle toward my hand?” (2.1.33-34), he is clearly at his wit’s end. While it is admirable to have ambition in life, his ambition for becoming a greater and more powerful man has led him to stick his own head in a vice and squeeze it endlessly with the pressure he puts on himself to take action. Unfortunately, this immense pressure Macbeth puts on himself will undoubtedly lead to his downfall instead of the triumph he can’t stop dreaming for. When he cries out to his hallucination, “Come, let me clutch thee” (2.1.34) and fails to do so since the dagger is only a figment of his imagination, he simply moans about this instead of rubbing his eyes and shaking off the incident like any sane person would. If anyone were to walk in the room right at this moment, it would certainly be an embarrassing scene, yet Macbeth is arguably so focused inward that he probably would not even notice anyone staring at him or making awkward attempts to snap him out of his trance. “I have thee not,” he moans in frustration, but “yet I see thee still” (2.1.35); he acknowledges that the tool to help him achieve his goals is out of his reach, but he refuses to take his eyes off of it — not even for a second. Accepting the idea that the only way to become king is to take this instrument of death and commit treason may not be something Macbeth is ready to do just yet, but it is not an option that he is willing to surrender either. Thus, Macbeth remains paralyzed, unable to do anything but keep his attention fixated on what haunts his every waking moment.

Note that this example is ONE paragraph that only covers the first few lines of this soliloquy in Macbeth. If I were to complete this essay, I would NOT continue to dissect EVERY line Macbeth says, but instead I would focus only on the parts that reinforce my argument that Macbeth is only succeeding in driving himself nuts by reaching for something that just doesn’t exist.

Take a moment and count how many lines I used here from the original text.

Now count how many pieces of commentary that I wrote that come from ME and do not involve summarizing plot.

Go on, I’ll wait.

….

Answer: 3 lines of concrete detail, and 8 pieces of commentary.
(The last concrete is split up into two parts, so it doesn’t count as two separate concrete details.)

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NOW ASK YOURSELF:

Beyond just length, how do these two examples compare?

Which is more informative and accessible to read, even for people who haven’t even read/seen Macbeth?
WHY???
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Which inspires more discussion/debate?
WHY???
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Which is more persuasive in the sense of having a good chance of convincing the reader to agree with its commentary/point of view?
WHY???